Serious Errors and Meaningful File Names, a newsies fanfic

Disclaimer: Newsies is not mine. So what else is new?

"I'm not doing it."

"Come on, Dutchy..."

"I'm not going near it."

"You have to. You have a paper due Friday."

"I don't care."

"Yes, you do. You just won't admit it."

"That's right."

Specs dragged Dutchy, who was clutching his backpack for dear life, up the stairs and into the computer room. He plunked him down on the swivel chair, in front of the screen, before pulling a small, metal fold-up chair out of the closet. He sat down and flipped the switch to the "on" position. Dutchy winced.

"Come on, it can't be that bad."

"Yes, it can."

"Welcome, Specs."

The voice said the name in a slow, robotic voice. Dutchy stared at Specs in disbelief.

"What?"

"It just...talked. To you."

"Yeah. So?"

"That's just...wrong."

Specs laughed, opened up a word processor and began typing quick commands. Dutchy observed all this with great caution.

"Okay, it's not so hard. You just use the keyboard like you would a typewriter..."

"I'm not that old-fashioned, Specs."

"I know. Anyway, type away, I can always format it for you later."

"Um, yeah. Sure."

"Trust me."

Dutchy couldn't argue with that. He hesitantly ran his fingers over the keys. "S" and "E" were so worn out, you could barely tell that they once stood for something.

"Just, type a sample sentence or something, make yourself comfortable."

Hi, My name is Du

And the screen went black. Dutchy quickly turned to Specs, wondering what he'd done wrong. Specs rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, it does that sometimes."

"Now you see why I don't like computers: Because computers don't like me!"

"Come on..."

As Specs went through the process of starting up the computer again, Dutchy rifled through his backpack and found his notebook. Leafing through the pages, he cast sideways glances back at Specs, who was completely absorbed in his typing, taking the incident as a personal blow to his pride. When it came to fighting with his computer, Specs liked to win.

"'The system has recovered from a serious error.'" He read off the screen. "No kidding..."

Dutchy laughed.

Two hours later, Dutchy had a paper to be proud of. Sure, he typed slowly, but now he could sincerely say that it was all his own work.

"Well, that wasn't so bad, was it?"

Dutchy shrugged, and Specs made to exit the program.

Do you wish to save the changes made to this document?

"Whoops. I can't believe we didn't save it yet!"

Specs hastily entered some quick key combinations, and a small window popped up:

Please enter a meaningful file name. The cursor was blinking.

Dutchy raised an eyebrow. "I know I'm pretty new to the whole computer thing, but that's just weird."